Remember the soundtrack of March Madness a year ago? It wasn’t about how great the college basketball postseason was … it was about how small and unjust it was.

Coaches all over America – well, the ones from the six power conferences – were singing in unison about how the championship tournament field of 65 teams absolutely had to be expanded, preferably to 96.

In the end, instead of 31 teams being added, three were, three teams that, to hear the coaches tell it, were annually denied a chance to compete for the national championship.

We get to see those three extra teams join up on Selection Sunday, and see them play next week. We’re seeing the competitors for those spots in the new field of 68 fighting it out now.

Impressed?

The coaches themselves, the ones who couldn’t and wouldn’t shut up about it last year, probably aren’t even impressed.

Because it is one motley crew straggling in toward the finish line for those extra three berths, the 35th, 36th and 37th at-large bids that didn’t exist last year.

Most of them go on display today as the major-conference tournaments really get going. No, we’re not talking about the mid-majors, the teams from the Colonial, West Coast, Mountain West and Missouri Valley, where the play has been so solid that, for a change, they could get more than one bid. (If only the same could be said for the Ivy League, which would get the loser of the Harvard-Princeton playoff into the field if there was any justice in life.)

No, we’re talking about Virginia Tech, slouching into ACC Tournament play with two soul-crushing losses that followed its win over then-No. 1 Duke.

And Michigan State, stinking up the Big Ten a year after making a second straight Final Four trip.

And Georgia and Alabama, banking more on how good they should be, instead of how well they actually are playing.

And Baylor and Nebraska – which, actually, are both gone, flat-lining in the Big 12 tournament Wednesday and proving how fast fortunes can change. Colorado and Marquette (the potential 11th Big East qualifier) did win, though, increasing the Golden Eagles’ chances of squeezing into the tournament. How enthralling.

Teams like that are scattered throughout the big conferences, and they litter the bottom of every mock bracket being drawn up. Yeah, this is much more fair, these extra berths. This is what the sport needed. It was struggling so much in popularity and ratings, it really needed this kind of shakeup.

It needed two more days’ worth of games between teams staggering about trying to salvage underwhelming seasons, in Dayton – lauded on a Wednesday conference call by tournament committee chairman Gene Smith as a site that has “demonstrated, historically, the ability to attract fans and provide a quality experience.’’

Of course, decide for yourself how much trust you put in the words of Smith, pulling double duty as committee chair and as Ohio State athletic director. There’s a pair of jobs reeking of integrity. Still, those lovely words about Dayton, perennial host of the play-in games in years past, translate easily into non-NCAA speak: Thanks for falling on that grenade, Dayton, because who else would want to host this rogues’ gallery?

Especially when the prize to the winners is a trip (potentially a long, draining one) to the next site and the next round, increasing the chances of a summary execution by a high seed. True, one of the losers’ bracket will produce a 12-seed for some major-conference also-ran, and those seeds have a history of success against the fifth seeds in the old format. But now that this No. 12 has been handed this new burden, don’t automatically pencil in that upset this year. Same for the 11-seed that will face the same handicap going in against a 6-seed.

Still excited, now that a possible bracket-shaker has been taken away?

This should get you tingling even more: Aside from the scrubs populating the nether regions of the bracket, you’ll also be entertained next week by a Brigham Young team without Brandon Davies, a Georgetown team without Chris Wright, a Florida State team without Chris Singleton – maybe even, if programs keep playing their way out of the tournament, a Baylor team without Perry Jones, or a Washington State team without Klay Thompson, or both. Not to mention aforementioned Michigan State, which seemed to just forget how to play this season, and Villanova, which forgot how to play only for the last month and a half.

Still, you should be excited about three more coaches saving their jobs by being able to say they took a team to the Dance. That’s what this was always about. Coupled with the fact that the NCAA is negotiating a new $10.8 billion television contract through 2024, almost simultaneously with the clamor for an expanded field (purely coincidental, to be sure), which necessitates a huge increase in games to justify it.

Beyond that, though, it was the coaches carrying the ball on this one. Including, by the way, Seth Greenberg of those very same Hokies that fall off the bubble every year, and are now in danger of falling off the one their coach insisted be enlarged so his program could fit onto it.

To their credit, the coaches at the time didn’t even deny that they were hollering about this for the benefit of their own job security, as if no one could tell that from the constant mentions of how many .500 football coaches cashed in on the bloated bowl lineup.

“From a selfish standpoint,’’ Jim Haney, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, said last year, “I was anticipating, like a lot of people, that it would go to 96.’’

It will, one of these days, for the coaches and for CBS and the Turner networks.

The rest of us will sit back and revel in the mediocrity. More this year than before, but not as much as there will be later.